Download 88-03-06_Decalogue_Laws_for_Loving

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
LAWS FOR LOVING
(The Ten Commandments)
Fr Francis Marsden
For 6 March 1988
Some schoolboys did a project on their housing estate. They asked passers—by to) tell them the Ten
~commandments.
Only 15 of 124 people knew them all. 47 either refused to answer or admitted they knew none. Stealing,
killing and adultery were most commonly remembered, but a few novelties also appeared:
“Thou shalt not ride a bike with no lights.”
“Thou shalt not be stupid.”
“Thou shalt do chores"
"Thou shalt not have girls or booze.”
“Thou shalt be good at sports.”
“Thou shalt be good to other grown-ups.”
We might add the eleventh commandment, beloved of politicians and American TV evangelists: “Whatever
wrong thou doest, thou shalt make sure not to get caught.”
More seriously, the Ten Commandments are merely a starting point for Christian morality. Christ’s
teaching and the Church’s wisdom build on them and develop them.
Love is the central power behind Christian living: “Ama et fac quod vis” (Love and do as you will) said
St Augustine. The saintly person naturally does what is good. By instinct he knows what is God’s will, what is
truly loving.
Few of us are at that stage. We need laws to teach us how to love. In one recent questionnaire, a majority
of English rated queue-jumping as a more serious offence than adultery. So much for the moral maturity of the
20th century
Love is a much abused word. It can mean many things. The poverty of the English language here causes
confusion. By comparison, Greek has four words for different types of love: erotic attraction, family love,
affectionate friendship, and agape - truly unselfish love desiring only the good of the beloved.
Consider for example the following uses of “love”:
“I love ice-cream.”
“I love lying in bed in the morning.”
“I love my little brother.”
“I love Doris.”
“I love my wife.”
“I love money.”
“I love God.”
In each of these cases, a different sort of love is involved. Love should be proportionate to the person or object
loved. I cannot eat my little brother in the way I eat ice-cream. If I love money in the way I should love God, I am
a miser.
It is morality which teaches us the right order of loving: God, then my wife, other people, and money to
maintain one’s family, are more important than ice-cream and lying in bed.
If I truly love someone, I desire his or her highest good and happiness, even at great cost to myself. Our
greatest good is ultimately to see and know God in heaven. Nothing else can compare with that. True love and
true morality have to take our final destiny into account. Worldly well-being matters little in the light of eternity.
Remember, it was Love Himself who whipped the traders out of the temple forecourts, and. who said
better to lose a limb than enter hell intact.
All sin is disordered love. If I love lying in bed in the morning and do not get up in time for work, that is
a disordered love of blankets and warmth.
If I love Doris (my secretary) in a way appropriate only to my wife, that is adultery and gravely sinful. It
is disordered love of Doris. Until repented of, it wrecks both our relationships with God.
Undefined “love” does not justify our actions. It has to be rightly ordered love, in harmony with God’s
laws and the nature of the beloved. Wulfstan and Bertha are engaged to be married. they love each other, but they
are not free to express that love in sexual union. If they do, their fornication ruins their relationship with God and
with the Christian community. However, once they are married, God rejoices in their married love.
St Augustine described sin as “amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei”- love of oneself to the point of
contempt for God. We know something is wrong and forbidden. We still do it for the sake of selfish gain or
pleasure. We love the sin more than we love God.
The Ten Commandments are like crash barriers on a motorway viaduct. Whoever smashes through them
is likely to perish. They tell us what is absolutely forbidden. They are universal and unchangeable laws, but they
need to be properly understood and refined in their application.
For example, “Thou shalt not kill” does not refer to the killing of animals for food, a just war,
self-defence or capital punishment. It does refer to the sanctity of all innocent human life. It forbids hatred,
violence, resentment, direct abortion, euthanasia, mutilation, and direct sterilization, any use of drugs or alcohol
which endangers health.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness” forbids lying. However, imagine a Dutch householder in 1940. He
has hidden some Jewish friends in his attic to save them from the concentration camps. Gestapo officers come
down the street searching the houses. They ask him: “Have you anyone else here besides your own family?” What
can he morally reply? If he answers, “No,” is that a lie?
One definition of a lie is ‘the refusal or failure to communicate an owed truth.’ An ‘owed truth’ is one
which the person asking has a right to know. In the case above, you have the duty not to reveal the truth to an
illegal invading army which plans evil.
Many today — like the pro-abortionists — oppose the idea of a universal moral law often called the
“natural law.” Morality is a private matter, they say. However, this can have terrible results.
Melvin Rees, a former university student, was known to his friends to be a mild-mannered, intelligent
man. He played the piano, the guitar, the saxophone and the clarinet, taking work wherever he could find it.
However, he had an unusual philosophy of murder: “You can’t say it’s wrong to kill,” he had once remarked,
“Only individual standards make it right or wrong.”’ (True Crime Diary, James Bland)
He was executed (aged 28) in 1961 for killing at least nine people, including two children and two
teenagers.
Objective moral laws are essential. Right and wrong are not just what we decide for ourselves. God has
written them into the very nature of man and creation.